In recent weeks, Western media have turned to well-worn analogies from the 1930s to explain the stakes of a potential “hot war” between Ukraine and Russia. The need to avoid “appeasing” the Kremlin is taken to justify increased military aid to Ukraine, while the question of the country’s right to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is routinely cast as a matter of national survival.

Professor Richard Sakwa, author of Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderland, paints a more complicated picture of Ukrainian-Russian relations. His analysis emphasizes a long-standing opposition within Ukrainian society between forces upholding a “pluralist” idea of the country and its relations with its neighbors, and nationalist movements committed to NATO membership and breaking ties with Russia.

The Maidan protests of 2014, the armed conflict in the Donbass region, and the Russian annexation of the Crimea each appear to have harshened these divides. Yet Ukrainians have expressed support for processes like the Minsk II agreement and Normandy Format talks as well as candidates committed to de-escalation — including current president Volodymyr Zelensky upon his election in 2019. Yet, in Sakwa’s words, in Ukraine a raucous hard-right minority has “held policy hostage” — an impasse that has also allowed hard-liners in Moscow to gain strength.